Polls opened in Virginia early Tuesday as the US state chooses its next governor in a margin-of-error skirmish seen as the first major test of President Joe Biden’s political brand.
A harbinger of the parties’ prospects in next year’s midterm elections, the race between Democratic former governor Terry McAuliffe and Republican tycoon Glenn Youngkin has narrowed in recent weeks and is squarely in toss-up territory.
While both candidates see voter turnout as the key in this off-year election, McAuliffe has relentlessly sought to tar Youngkin as a devotee of Donald Trump, saying the former president is “rallying up his base of right-wing extremists” in a bid for victory.
“We have a chance to deny darkness its day and keep the drumbeat of progress,” McAuliffe tweeted as polls opened at 6:00 am (1000 GMT). “Together, we will build a better future for our Commonwealth. VOTE.”
Youngkin likewise sought to rally supporters to action. “The polls are open, Virginia!” he said. “GO VOTE!”
A McAuliffe win would reignite Washington Democrats’ faltering push for twin infrastructure and social welfare mega-bills that are the cornerstone of Biden’s $3 trillion vision for remaking the economy.
With both packages bogged down by infighting in Congress, moderates would likely see defeat in Virginia as a warning from the electorate to ease up on the president’s historic spending plans.
On the Republican side, a loss for Youngkin could finally touch off a reckoning of a different sort on the party’s previously unshakeable fealty to twice-impeached Trump, who lost Virginia by 10 points last year.
– ‘Left, liberal, progressive’ –
As he tries to mount a return to an office he held four years ago, McAuliffe must negotiate significant headwinds, with the majority party in Washington usually incurring losses during a president’s first term.
Youngkin has been performing his own high-wire act, as the vast majority of Republicans believe Trump’s false claims that the presidency was stolen in a fraudulent election, making acknowledging the truth politically risky.
While he was seeking the nomination, Youngkin conjured the spirit of the former president, refusing to say whether he would have voted to certify Biden’s election victory after the failed insurrection by Trump supporters on January 6.
But the wealthy former investment banker, 54, has managed to distance himself from Trump at the business end of the campaign, focusing on local “culture war” issues like abortion, mask mandates and the teaching of America’s racial history.
“This is a moment for Virginians to push back on this left, liberal, progressive agenda and take our commonwealth back,” Youngkin told a rally Monday in state capital Richmond.
Trump has not shown up to campaign in person, although he has angrily denied a rift with Youngkin and released an incendiary statement Monday smearing McAuliffe as a “low-life politician who lies, cheats, and steals.”
In contrast, a number of other big-name Democrats have wooed Virginians in recent days, including former president Barack Obama, First Lady Jill Biden and the party’s rising star Stacey Abrams.
McAuliffe took an early lead in the race but his seven-point cushion has been tightening since summer, and the latest polling average by political analysis website FiveThirtyEight shows Youngkin ahead by one point.
Leaning into his image as the establishment candidate, the 64-year-old McAuliffe has sold himself as a former incumbent who brought back jobs after the worldwide financial crisis of 2008, and has pledged to repeat the trick for the pandemic.
Biden joined McAuliffe in Arlington last week, blasting Youngkin as “an acolyte of Donald Trump” and warning that extremism “can come in a smile and a fleece vest.”
